Are those comments cherrypicked or do they represent a meaningful share of the Republican base? There’s no direct polling on whether it’s okay to throw a reporter down (I hope) but a survey a few weeks ago from UVA found 88 percent of Trump voters either strongly or somewhat agree that the press is the enemy of the American people. Getting rough is how enemies usually end up dealing with each other. What lessons the press takes away about Montana voters from tonight’s result will depend on whether Gianforte underperforms or overperforms his polls. If the Democrats pulls the upset, the narrative will be “Montanans reject thuggery!” If Gianforte wins by a surprise landslide, “Republicans embrace thuggery!”

Ben Shapiro aptly divides the Gianforte apologists into three categories: The media-haters; the hyper-partisans; and the macho men, who think a soft society could stand some harder deterrents. (“These same people will cry ‘snowflake’ at Antifa for attempting to shut down debate with violence.”) Each of those tendencies is understandable in moderation; as they accelerate and become self-reinforcing you get the fascist attitude you’re about to hear, in which an American citizen suggests that one way to get the media to report “better” is to terrorize them until they do. Is Trump the cause of the acceleration, as a million hot takes tomorrow will insist if Gianforte wins tonight, or is he the symptom? The more people crave boorishness as an antidote to “political correctness,” however they define that, the more boorishness they may be willing to tolerate as part of the effort.